Wind turbines on the Kumayaay Indian reservation in southern California.
The Global Wind Energy Council has
released results of its survey of wind energy installed across the planet in 2014, and it's impressive: 51.5 gigawatts for a worldwide total of 369 gigawatts. In 2013, global installations of wind totaled 35 GW.
In the United States, 4.9 GW were installed in 2014, a big step up from the 1.1 GW installed in 2013, but well below the record of 13.2 GW installed in the United States in 2012. The U.S. total is now 65.9 GW. That's more than the Department of Energy forecast in 2005 that the United States would have installed by 2030.
At the top of the heap for installed wind turbines in 2014 was China, with 24.4 GW added. The European Union and rest of Europe installed 12.8 GW. Germany led there with 5.2 GW.
While wind still constitutes a very small fraction of the world's installed electricity-generating capacity, analysts are forecasting that this continued growth means wind turbines could constitute good portion of the planet's total capacity by 2030. In its "advanced" scenario, for instance, GWEC's Global World Energy Outlook calculates that there could be 2,000 GW of wind power installed by 2030, providing 19 percent of the world's electricity. By 2050, the estimate is 25-30 percent. But when you start forecasting possibilities three and more decades away, there are of necessity many caveats.
Dave Appleyard writes:
The more realistic, business as usual, “moderate” forecast sees an annual market size topping 65 GW by 2020 for a total installed capacity of 712 GW by then. Robust growth is anticipated in the period after 2020, with annual markets exceeding 85 GW by 2030 and bringing total installed capacity up to nearly 1500 GW by the end of that decade.
In terms of the volume of electricity produced by wind power, the GWEO “moderate” scenario envisages a large contribution from wind, some 1750 TWh in 2020, rising to almost 3900 TWh in 2030. In this case wind power would meet between 7.2 percent and 7.8 percent of global electrical demand in 2020, and between 12.9 percent and 14.5 percent by 2030. The report notes that while this is quite a substantial contribution, it is nonetheless “probably not in line with what would be required to meet agreed climate protection goals.”
There's more analysis below the fold.
There are obstacles and potential ones to maximizing this growth. Some analysts view the drop in oil prices as a drawback for expanding the capacity of wind, solar and other renewable sources of energy. Others say the fall provides an opportunity. Appleyard again:
Sven Teske, Greenpeace senior energy expert and one of the principal authors of the report, contends that the forecasts are robust even in the face of wider energy market volatility, such as the dramatic drop in oil prices that has seen oil fall to below $50 a barrel. “I do not think the current low oil price will have an effect on the global wind market,” he said, explaining: “as oil is for transport, approximately 80 percent [of global demand] and wind generates power.
“The economics of the power supply for islands [where renewables often compete with diesel gensets] might be affected negatively for renewable energy, but this is, firstly, more a problem for PV and, secondly, the market share of off-grid wind and actually also PV is currently quite low — thus the effect will be minor.”
The other blockade is the production tax credit that provides a 10-year subsidy of 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by solar, wind and geothermal sources. The PTC has expired and been renewed many times since it was first introduced by Congress in 1992. This yo-yo effect hurts. Investors are more likely to shy away from projects that have extra measures of uncertainty, and the prospects for the PTC are frequently uncertain.
For new projects, the PTC currently applies only to those begun in 2014. The wind industry's lobbyists have sought to get a longer-term PTC by supporting a gradually diminishing subsidy, 80 percent of what it is now in 2016, 60 percent in 2017.
Many Republicans support renewing the PTC. Sen. Charles Grassley, for instance—whose home state of Iowa now generates at least 27 percent of its electricity by wind turbines—favors it. But others do not. And given the make-up of Congress right now, the credit's future is murky at best.